American Crucifixion (41 page)

“I know there are hundreds in this congregation who would have been glad to have been where we were,” he said. “I know Joseph and Hyrum lived and died men of God and will live for evermore.”

* In 1903, Utah’s first Senator-elect, Reed Smoot, repeatedly denied that he had taken the Oath of Vengeance, which remained in the temple ritual until 1927.

* Melissa Lott Wiles, young Joseph’s “Aunt Melissa” and one of the Prophet’s young plural wives, later told Joseph III that Emma was forced to deceive him in this famous interview: “You took your mother before Mr. Bidamon, a bitter enemy of our people, and then asked such questions of her as you wished . . . I have no doubt that your mother told you the truth so far as she could under the circumstances; but if you had taken her by herself . . . and asked your questions, she would probably have answered you as I have done.” Melissa shocked Joseph III by admitting that she was the Prophet’s wife “in very deed.”

PREPARING TO WRITE THIS BOOK I HAD THE PRIVILEGE OF meeting many of the greatest living historians of the Latter-day Saints, who provided me with valuable counsel. Richard Bushman, D. Michael Quinn, Scott Kenney, Gary Bergera, and John Turner all spent time with me. Todd Compton, Stephen LeSueur, and Lori Stromberg agreed to read portions of my manuscript and each made important suggestions. Brigham Young University historian Michael Hicks and my friend the writer Katherine Powers both read the entire final draft and provided valuable input.

In Salt Lake City, Ronald Barney of the Mormon Historical Society provided continual encouragement and a host of valuable sources for me to pursue. Robin Jensen and Alex Smith at the Latter-day Saints’ Church History Library answered many of my questions and Bill Slaughter helped me with illustrations, as he has helped so many other writers. I would also like to thank CHL staffers Brittany Chapman and Anna Bybee. Trevor Weight at the Brigham Young University Art Gallery and Douglas Misner at the Utah State Historical Archive furnished illustrations for me, as did Carol Nielson at The Daughters of Utah Pioneers museum.

Steven Lindeman, Sharon Kessinger, and Chelsea Robarge also helped me enormously in Utah. Katrina Haglund and Ron Scott shared advice and contacts with me from Boston.

Sherry Morain, executive director of the John Whitmer Historical Association, took an early interest in this book and introduced me to many of the leading historians of the Nauvoo period. She also arranged with Lachlan Mackay, director of Historic Sites for the Community of Christ (formerly the Reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints) for me to spend several nights in Nauvoo in a house once occupied by William Marks, a determined foe of polygamy. Sherry and Lachlan led me to Joseph Johnstun, an expert on 1840s Nauvoo, and to historian William Shepard, who graciously shared many of his research materials with me. Jan Marshall unlocked many an obscure John Whitmer Historical Association document for me.

Historian and cartographer John Hamer created two attractive maps for my Frontispiece, for which much thanks.

John Hallwas, one of the preeminent scholars of the Mormon experience in Illinois, arranged for me to visit his archive at Western Illinois University, where I was assisted by librarian Kathy Nichols. Historians Rodney Davis, Lavina F. Anderson, Roger Launius, Grant Palmer, Bryon Andreason, Adam Christing, Dan Vogel, and Vickie Cleverly Speek also provided help and counsel along the way.

Librarians and archivists are the unacknowledged legislators of the universe, but here I acknowledge them: at the Yale Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Todd Fell and Eva Wrightson helped me assemble documents. So did Cindy Brightenburg at Brigham Young University’s Harold B. Lee Library, Susan Forbes at the Kansas State Historical Society, and Janet Holtman, from the Hancock County Historical Society. I am grateful that W. V. Smith digitized so many nineteenth-century Mormon journals, autobiographies, and B. H. Roberts’s entire church history at the Book of Abraham Project website, www.boap.org. I made extensive use of Massachusetts’s interlibrary loans, aided by Elinor Hernon, Karen Fischer, and Paula Lawrence at the Newton Free Library. My friends and former colleagues at the
Boston Globe,
Lisa Tuite and Jeremiah Manion, stayed with me for the duration. Tom Wolf helped me prepare my manuscripts. Thanks to all.

It’s wonderful to have friends. Ron Koltnow, Roger Lowenstein, Charles Pierce, Joseph Finder, Steven Stark, John Burgess, David Taylor, James Parker, Mark Feeney, David Warsh, and Jennifer Schuessler cheered me on for several years. My friend of over forty years, Michael Carlisle, heard that a young editor named Benjamin Adams dreamed of commissioning a book on the historic but little understood assassination of Joseph Smith. Ben got his book, and he provided superb editorial guidance from beginning to end. I cherish my relations with Ben and his colleagues at PublicAffairs, with whom I have now collaborated three times. Susan Weinberg, Clive Priddle, and my
droog
from another lifetime, Peter Osnos, have always supported my work; marketing director Lisa Kaufman edited my last two books. Special thanks again to Jaime Leifer and Lindsay Fradkoff, for marketing and promotional support. Managing editor Melissa Raymond is the firm hand on the production tiller, aided for this project by Rachel King and the indefatigable and erudite copy editor Michele Wynn.

One of the underpinnings of Joseph Smith’s theology was his belief that families would meet again after death and live together for all eternity. I would like nothing more than to spend the remains of my days, and more, with my wife and three sons, who have been my constant friends and supporters for most of my life. I owe them a huge debt. Kirsten, Christopher, Eric, and Michael—I love you.

December 23, 1805:
Joseph Smith is born in Sharon Township, Windsor County, Vermont.

January 18, 1827:
Joseph elopes and marries Emma Hale.

Spring 1830:
Publication of the Book of Mormon, establishment of the Church of Christ in upstate New York.

February 1831:
Joseph moves the seat of his church government to Kirtland, Ohio.

May 1834:
The church is renamed The Church of the Latter Day Saints.

January 1838:
Joseph flees Kirtland after Mormon bank failure, reestablishes the church in Missouri. The church is renamed The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

October 1838:
Missouri Governor Boggs issues anti-Mormon Extermination Order, closely followed by the massacre of seventeen Saints at Haun’s Mill, Missouri.

Winter 1838–1839:
Joseph imprisoned; Mormons flee across the Mississippi River to Illinois.

May 1839:
Joseph joins the Mormons in their new town of Nauvoo, Hancock County, Illinois.

Spring 1841:
Joseph cautiously unveils doctrine of “plural marriage” to his inner circle, marries Louisa Beaman, age twenty-six.

June 1841:
“Anti-Mormon” political party founded in Hancock County.

May 28, 1843:
Joseph seals his marriage to Emma “for time and eternity.” He now has approximately twenty-five other wives.

June 24, 1843:
Missouri sheriffs arrest Joseph in Dixon, Illinois. Renowned Whig lawyer Cyrus Walker wins Smith’s freedom in return for the promise of Mormon votes in the forthcoming congressional election. Guided by revelation, the Saints vote en masse for Walker’s opponent, alienating both Whigs and Democrats.

January 29, 1844:
Joseph announces his candidacy for president of the United States.

April 7, 1844:
Joseph delivers the King Follett Discourse, explaining that “God himself was once as we are now” and that humans can aspire to divinity. Smith adds, “I don’t blame anyone for not believing my history. If I had not experienced what I have, I could not have believed it myself.”

April 21, 1844:
Joseph’s former confidant William Law organizes the breakaway True Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, decrying the heretical doctrines of the plurality of gods, and polygamy.

June 7, 1844:
Law and fellow dissidents publish the
Nauvoo Expositor
newspaper, accusing Joseph Smith of “a perversion of sacred things.”

June 10, 1844:
Acting on Smith’s instructions, the Nauvoo City Council orders the destruction of the
Expositor
newspaper and its printing press.

June 14, 1844:
Thomas Sharp’s Warsaw, Illinois,
Signal
calls for “a war of extermination” against the Mormons.

June 18, 1844:
In full military regalia, Lieutenant General Joseph Smith declares martial law in Nauvoo, telling the 2,000-man Nauvoo Legion that “I have unsheathed my sword.”

June 23, 1844:
Joseph Smith flees Nauvoo, crossing the Mississippi River to Iowa.

June 24, 1844:
Smith returns to Nauvoo, agrees to travel to Carthage, Illinois, to face riot charges.

June 27, 1844:
A mob storms the Carthage jail, killing Joseph and his brother Hyrum.

August 8, 1844:
Brigham Young assumes control of the Mormon Church.

February 6, 1846:
Young leads a small wagon train across the ice-choked Mississippi River, bound for the Mormons’ new home in the Utah Territory.

2

Orrin Porter Rockwell . . . “shaggy and dangerous”

: Fawn Brodie,

(New York: Vintage Books, 1995)

p. 330.

3

Finally discerning his friend

: Harold Schindler,

(Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1966), p. 109.

4

“had shewn unto us the plates”

: Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Edition (Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2003), p. 632.

4

“If you will write the revelation”

: Gary James Bergera, “‘Illicit Intercourse,’ Plural Marriage, and the Nauvoo Stake High Council, 1840–1844,”

23 (2003), p. 83ff.

5

“The whole of America is Zion”

: D. Michael Quinn,

(Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1994), p. 124.

6

“People coming to Nauvoo expected”

: William Wyl,

(Salt Lake City: Tribune Printing, 1886), p. 26.

6

“I love that man better”

: Ibid., p. 378.

6

“I investigated the case”

: Brodie,

p. 289.

7

“I am the only man that has ever”

: B. H. Roberts, ed.,

2nd ed., rev., vol. 6 (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1978), p. 409.

8

“I am above the kingdoms of the world”

: Roger Launius and John Hallwas, eds.,

(Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1996), p. 154.

8

“When I look into the Eastern papers”

: Scott H. Faulring, ed.,

(Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989), p. 456.

9

“we would not be surprised to hear”

:

(IL), May 29, 1844.

14

“Come on! ye prosecutors!”

: B. H. Roberts, ed.,

2nd ed., rev., vol. 6 (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1978), p. 408.

15

“A mad mix of doctrines”

: Harold Bloom,

(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), p. 111.

15

Nor was meeting Jesus a unique occurrence

: Fawn Brodie,

(New York: Vintage Books, 1995), p. 22.

16